Thread: Yellowtail Yawl Update

Yup, I've been busy ... not just on the boat but repairing the lad's and my pushbikes as well. But here are the latest pics. Typically, much of the work can't be seen but I know it's there

Piccy one shows the rubbing strip along the bottom of the sheer plank. Yup, you saw that going on with my fancy, expensive clamps There's been more sanding and stuffing around with these than is strictly necessary, thanks mainly to a desire to do the job perfectly colliding with an unusually acute case of ten thumbs disease. Fortunately, I'm past both syndromes now though I will remember for some time lying on my back with my arms outstretched over my head holding a sander trying to work on the bottom of those damned strips Those strips had the edges rounded off with my (new - birfday pressy ) trimmer router which does a ripper job ... and when you're not watching and let the bolt in end of the router bit touch the sheer plank, you wind up with a burn mark that is the merry dickens to remove The rubbing strip is kapur and there will be another in the traditional gunwale position at the top of the sheer plank. The hope is that the sheer plank and these will be finished bright - and if I keep building to my current standard, there is a nice pot of blue paint waiting :eek:

Piccy two shows what's been happening in the front floatation chamber, well most of what's happening. Buried in the bowels of the chamber, neatly epoxied and faired to the planks and stem, is the bottom mast step. The whole chamber has three coats of poxy. You can see the hole for the inspection port (as described in another post). That funny bit on the top of it all is the top mast step. The boat wasn't designed to have a mast here and the breast hooks were fitted as per the original design, hence the mast step is fitted into the breast hooks. There is also a rather high peak to this part of the deck and while it may not look like it, the inwales, breast hook and mast step have been shaped to take the decking.

Sort of the next step is to clean up the inwales right along, fit the fore deck, fit a strip of kapur along the top of the inwale and plank butting up against the fore deck, then fitting the gunwale. In this way, the decking will flow in with that top strip and the end grain of the sheer plank will be covered. Kapur is being used because it takes the knocks and looks a lovely red when coated with poxy (and thence varnish) so it should set off the white of the ply velly nicely Then it's inside the boat, fitting seat tops and mizzen mast steps. Then I can start thinking about the coach house and coamings. Bloody hell, I was feeling confident of finishing before I started this paragraph

So tings is moving ahead (stop panicking Mik, it'll be finished before hell freezes over).

Cheers
Richard
(and I'll be putting updates in this thread methinks)